Transparent Electronics Based on Transfer Printed Aligned Carbon Nanotubes on Rigid and Flexible Substrates

• Published in: ACS nano Vol. 3; no. 1; pp. 73 - 79
• Main Authors: Ishikawa, Fumiaki N, Chang, Hsiao-kang, Ryu, Koungmin, Chen, Po-chiang, Badmaev, Alexander, Gomez De Arco, Lewis, Shen, Guozhen, Zhou, Chongwu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 27.01.2009
• Subjects: Carbon - chemistry; Electrochemistry - methods; Electronics; Equipment Design; Glass; Light; Materials Testing; Models, Statistical; Nanostructures - chemistry; Nanotechnology - methods; Nanotubes, Carbon - chemistry; Polyethylene Terephthalates - chemistry; Surface Properties; Temperature; transparent display; transfer printing; transparent transistor; aligned nanotube; flexible transistor
• ISSN: 1936-0851; 1936-086X
• DOI: 10.1021/nn800434d

We report high-performance fully transparent thin-film transistors (TTFTs) on both rigid and flexible substrates with transfer printed aligned nanotubes as the active channel and indium−tin oxide as the source, drain, and gate electrodes. Such transistors have been fabricated through low-temperature processing, which allowed device fabrication even on flexible substrates. Transparent transistors with high effective mobilities (∼1300 cm2 V−1 s−1) were first demonstrated on glass substrates via engineering of the source and drain contacts, and high on/off ratio (3 × 104) was achieved using electrical breakdown. In addition, flexible TTFTs with good transparency were also fabricated and successfully operated under bending up to 120°. All of the devices showed good transparency (∼80% on average). The transparent transistors were further utilized to construct a fully transparent and flexible logic inverter on a plastic substrate and also used to control commercial GaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with light intensity modulation of 103. Our results suggest that aligned nanotubes have great potential to work as building blocks for future transparent electronics.